Dear Lifehacker, Recommend A Book That Will Change My Life

Here is a pointless story. All through my adult like I was terrible with money. Not only was I terrible with money, but I didn't care that I was terrible with money. Like, I felt no real motivation to change my habits. Then one day, at an old job, a colleague brought in some books he was throwing out. Among them was a book about learning to use money. I have no idea why I picked it up, but I did. And it changed my life.

The tragedy is I can't even remember what that book was called. It was — even then — a relatively old book about managing money but I started reading it on the train home. Then I kept reading it when I got home.

And reading.

And reading.

Before I knew it I had finished the book and, because of it, completely transformed the way I thought about, and use, money. I've pretty much used those fundamentals ever since. I'm not rich, far from it. But I am now in a far better place financially than I would be had I not read that book.

Which is all just a long winded way of asking this question: have you ever read a book that legitimately changed your life for the better? And if so, what was it?

And while we're at it — any book recommendations? I want you to recommend a book that will legitimately change my life all over again.

"Total Immersion" by Terry Laughlin. It changed my swimming life when I watched the DVD, and bought the book as soon as I finished watching it. I just wished that I was taught to swim this way when I was a kid - it would have saved so much training time and improved my triathlon races. I tell everyone I know, that Total Immersion is the way to swim.

Its pulpy, and written for the lowest common denominator, but that's part of the appeal.

It introduces the concept of treating your personal finances like a business - that is, by reading the balance sheet. It opened my eyes to the idea that maybe working for someone else my whole life wasn't going to make me happy :)

Of course, following the advice without thinking it through properly resulted in me getting into some crippling debt and almost going bankrupt after my business crashed and burned, but that's a different story :P

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

At a time when I was questioning a lot about life, consumerism, and life in the rate race, I found it incredibly reassuring to find that someone else had considered these things and framed them so well in words.

From Wikipedia:
"Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development."

Reading Walden was a big part in giving me the courage to leave my soulless corporate job and move my family to the country to start again on a different path. In fact I drew so much strength and inspiration from the book that I plan on naming our eventual homestead (that I plan to build myself) after it.

To anyone else who is pursuing or considering the pursuit of 'the simple life', I strongly recommend reading Walden. The book is in the public domain and easily found in a variety of formats, as well as still being published as a paperback.

Y: the last man.
Its about a world where every guy is dead except for yorick and his monkey.....plus all the women. It will give you a healthy fear of large groups of women. Also it's a comic so...pictures \o/

Many years ago, I gave Noel Whittaker's first book "Making Money Made Simple" to a friend who wasn't good with money. It changed his outlook and now he is looking forward to a very comfortable retirement.

Related to this, I suggest either 'Letters' by Seneca or 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius highly as key texts in Stoic philosophy. Both, despite being written in Ancient Rome, are applicable to the 21st century.

as a now 29 year old guy that grew up in a divorced family and had parents that thought spending money and buying me 'things' was loving me. ive had a real hard time trying to figure out what it means to be manly in the sense of responsibilities, self-worth, having good work ethics and life attitudes, being a good husband, being a good father, being a good friend. to be honest, its been a terribly hard journey. some books that i really appreciate and have given me hope were 'Fathered by God - John Eldredge, Father Heart of God - Floyd McClung, The Shack - William P Young,

these books are from a Christian point of view, but reading the first 2 i found offered a very insightful look into why i was struggling with the things i was and were great contributing factors in pulling me out of depression.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's about a man who was taken prematurely by cancer but who managed to live out each of his childhood dreams over the course of his life. The book is a letter to his children on how to do the same. The book is full of little anecdotes that genuinely changed my outlook on life and made me a kinder, more empathetic person.

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